You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so , join our community today!

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us.

What to make of Microsoft Security Essentials?

microsoft.public.windows.vista.security

On my conventional desktop Vista PCs I have been using ESET Smart security
(supplemented by daily backups and occasional scans with Ad-Aware, Windows
Defender and Malwarebytes Anti-malware), but with the emergence from beta
yesterday of Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE)downloadable and free from:

I am wondering whether to settle for that instead. Indeed I am wondering
whether MSE hasn't effectively blown the other security suites out of the
water, and, if so, is whether that is a good thing or not.

I have just installed MSE, a very well behaved install. Interestingly on
first install the Security Center showed MSE installed as well as Windows
Defender, but after a re-start, Windows Defender had gone. MSE has done a
quick scan taking a few minutes and I now have it doing a full scan which
has been running for 45 minutes and looks as though it will take several
hours.

I am rather hoping that a side effect of changing to MSE will be that
Windows Live Mail is cured from its occasional lock-ups. I am already
encouraged by signs of increased sprightliness there.

Normally I am put off by Microsoft expanding their monopoly, but in this
case they seem to have produced an impressive product, and I am slightly
kicking myself for having signed up with ESET for three years covering two
PCs.

Doug wrote:
> On my conventional desktop Vista PCs I have been using ESET Smart
> security (supplemented by daily backups and occasional scans with
> Ad-Aware, Windows Defender and Malwarebytes Anti-malware), but with the
> emergence from beta yesterday of Microsoft Security Essentials
> (MSE)downloadable and free from:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/Security_essentials/
>
> I am wondering whether to settle for that instead. Indeed I am wondering
> whether MSE hasn't effectively blown the other security suites out of
> the water, and, if so, is whether that is a good thing or not.

So long as it is always free it's a good thing. I just made a post about
my opinion of it so you can read that. Overall it is good but it is
missing some needed features and already quarantined two harmless files
on my Win7 PC. In XP it is using way too much cpu resources whenever I
open an explorer folder with files in it but never had the same issue on
Win7 64bit. Only reason I put it on XP is because bloody Avira updates
were just way too slow so blew it away and installed MSSE instead.